Krysia Jopek

/23

The words were very hungry and, in turn, made the people who heard them hungry.

Some of the captivated audience would go for celebratory pizza and beer and talk utter bullshit;

others flew home in metal-boxes to their estranged spouses, disappointed children, mammoth TVs—

cyber blue light in the retinas too many hours of quotidian escape burned even in their half-dreams

[or, maybe] the pages of the Book would locate and drown them;

sentences dangling them over the edge-plateau Abyss. There were

metaphysical moments a few in the crowd wanted to talk about,

but the words ran right off the page—like a watercolor

on an incline leaving spider threads / maps. The dilapidated, lopsided mask-

constructions might banish the evil spirits back to their proverbial, macabre forests—

but We can no longer see the trees; stuck in being [pronouns].

A sign on the door signals the baby is, at last, sleeping.

The writing on the wall promised the war in someone else’s country would still be going on;

too many splintering teams, foreign interest / disinterest, complications of vested interests,

threats of terrorism / social media [de-]propaganda, [no breathtaking leadership]—

but what, in essence, should a concerned citizen do—make a phone call, send an email,

text the netherworld; tell them to come fetch some of the complicit / colluded crew?

Time should be carefully allotted before it accrues, fools you.

It’s silly to remove the lower pillars of the shifting construction,

but the heavy-metal soundtrack, replete with a chorus of electric guitars and five mammoth drum sets

made it all seem somewhat, temporarily bearable—

before the crumble-shuffle cumulative shock effects; how dizzying!

You really should un-knot the plush, golden rope for the disaffected cat; tired, she lounges

in the tall September grass; late lavender heather, Russian sage, burnt clover—

all the neighbors of the disenfranchised global neighborhood [almost everyone]–

hanging on by a spider’s thread. Saturday’s fifth gear will dissipate

exponentially by Monday, sigh.

It’s all esoteric philosophy [subjective sentences built out of private nomenclature] anyway, isn’t it?]

The cicadas will be even earlier tonight than the earlier earlier duskfall sky paintings, muted by cloud layers,

giving the illusion that all the pain is softer;  light traveling farther away to be closer to

someone / something else.

Objects, adjectives, prepositions, and complicated ideas [the brain’s strange pictures edited by someone who went temporarily psychotic with the scissors and tape]

will be defined by what they are not.

July is not January; money is not water.

Not everything can be counted; not everything can be lost.

I lost the night, the skeleton key to my grandmother’s china cabinet, my shadow at the airfield when the military planes went by, the turquoise and chartreuse scarf my mother brought me back from Ireland last May, my resolve.

I lost the notebook with all the passwords, the memo from my boss about tomorrow’s emergency meeting, the apricot dinner-plate dahlia tubers I dug up two months ago, my right to stay silent.

I lost my way out of the forest at twilight, my focus on the last star before cloud blankets settled in, the ability to stay composed during the police interrogation, my favorite coffee mug, my posture.

I lost the burnt sienna leather gloves you bought me, my father’s father’s chest of war medals, the note I left on the refrigerator to remind me of ___________ , my trust in the government, my affection for the media.

I lost my checkbook, my debit card, my childhood bank book, my morals from twenty years ago in the shuffle of the twenty-first century.
I lost my sleeping bag, the one with the broken zipper anyway. The directions to the secret cove at the shore, the obsidian rock, the stone plateau covered in barnacles where the tiniest creatures pool in the ankle-high water warmed by the sun. Where the spearfisherman cherry-picking the taug taugs that taste like the lobster and crab they eat scraped up his back on the rocks during high tide, and disappeared.

I lost the crystal earring from Czechoslovakia, the large amber pendant with insects stuck inside forever brought to me by my now-deceased ciocia [aunt] from the open market in Krakow. I lost my will to open the door to the universe and say hello to whomever lurks awkwardly inside.

I lost the onyx eyeglasses I need for driving at night, my favorite prescription cheetah reading glasses, the pills that help me sleep but often cause me to hover above toward my bedroom ceiling and witness myself as dream.

The GPS that was left in the car before the crash, the remote on which the seven and nine do not click in. I lost the address to the place that was supposed to help me. I lost my patience for anyone not an innocent child, elderly person, or animal.

I lost my ability to do math; calculate right angles I could no longer see, approximate to the nearest meaningful decimal, the right attitude for talking a jumper down from the platitudes/highest skyscrapers in New York City. I lost my desire for what I used to want so vehemently in my much-younger years.

I lost my father’s sense of ambition; he wanted for me to make six figures, be a success with a large 401k to which he added IRAs when he calculated my paltry tax return annually with the patience of a saint. I lost the ability to work in a cubicle of clocks ticking and unhappy women talking to their estranged spouses during lunch while eating processed-meat sandwiches or takeout from Taco Bell, McDonalds, Wendy’s, Dunkin Donuts, Kentucky Fried Chicken, or Subway.

I lost the spare key to the shed where I buried my doll heads and eyelashes I cut, thinking they would then grow longer because of something I overheard my mother saying to her best friend; the only key to my elderly mother’s safety deposit box [formerly jointly owned by both my parents before my beloved father’s earthly demise] when I retrieved my adoption papers and birth name for the first time.

I lost the antique, yellow, “puffy” lamp bequeathed to me by my favorite voyek [uncle], the white double-blossom rose of Sharon, the female apple tree without its mate [didn’t return after last year’s interminable winter], seven types of designer coneflowers, including Apricot Sunrise, Double-decker Green, Double-decker Pink, Mixed berry–because I was too dangerously depressed last spring to weed.

I lost my convictions, my definitions of happiness, love.

It wasn’t all due to carelessness; there was some fatigue. A spiritual fatigue that settled in –that winter the three ghosts of the House came and watched everything.

I must confess the onerous guilt of multitasking / juggling a million fractured things while on metaphorical crack / caffeine to counter the aforementioned spiritual plus, autoimmune / lupus fatigue.

The ghosts came to me again in the early morning this stunning September morning and spoke slowly, barely audibly, in my left ear [clogged more than the right from goldenrod allergies] that everything, yes, everything was going to be okay;

that forgiveness was not their jurisdiction but my own.

The sole female ghost of the House, Rita Lemery, was the one who did the whispering while the ghosts of her husband, Roger, and my late father lurked on either side of her.

Rita’s ghost cooed with a voice of pure golden honey that my poem about losing things was beautiful, and that she and the other ghosts [even ones who did not frequent my cellar], including that ethereal / eternal version of my father, were proud of me.

written after Henry Jopek [my father] passed away on March 31, 2015

Shed the black cloths of mourning for white lilies, gladiolas, tulips, hyacinth.

A private grieving finally alone in the House. Thank God. Birds sleeping in the rain

in barren trees of tiniest buds will eventually sprout magnolia and pear blossoms,

ladders of cathedral bells. No more PANIC of not being able to BREATHE properly.

The lungs washed clean by rain. The cloths of being unimaginable

it has been said so much // so little–just rain awash and human weeping

for the lost waiting rooms–for the man who shrank

into a fracture of star.

Count the steps to the mailbox at night, the number of seconds in emotional freefall, the minutes left in the hour, the hours until the work finish line. There is always more time [on some level] somewhere.

When flipping the conversation on its Kafka-esque back—make eye contact to gauge the subject’s attitude. So many are distracted by the internal goings-on; a few seconds is enough to gauge the subject’s attitude.

Enumerate the drops of the waterfall to have that Zen experience amidst the mass-produced chaos of the hour. Cars zigzagging on the freeway; following too closely. Road rage will get you nowhere; zoom in on your shadowed hand.

The dreamer becomes a statue lost underwater, tangled in seaweed moss. The fishhook may dislodge more dirt than one can handle. Pull up the nets and count the bounty; contemplate setting the captive free.

Saturday’s fifth gear will dissipate exponentially by Monday, sigh.

The other subjects were pleasant overall.

If reading between the lines, jettison all lines. There are no absolute rules—just the skeletons of fists grasping one’s own collar.

When sleep becomes a weighted blanket, wrap the moon and stars around the body’s cocoon; brace for the rain in the open windows that let in tomorrow’s frenetic bird trills.

There was heated discussion of not talking about the wars going on; documents signed to hide other documents. Talk of fake news, media non-facts, egregious behaviors, illogical events. . .

Don’t be fooled by the proliferating screens.

The subject’s suitcase hides a vacation to the island of reprieve. It will be very quiet there; pack music to unfold pages/uncurling mimosa blooms.

Don’t panic; others have felt this way.

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Fireworks resumed deep in the stomach, avalanching a euphoria that bled enormous lilies.

The attendant soundtrack was quite abstract [ocean at high tide set to rain]: recompense for too many days of suffering.

If you can only blame yourself, don’t blame anyone.

It’s often necessary to bully oneself out of a corner in private margins of melancholy, remembering that nothing lasts, including stone walls and the vines that find them.

The towering crimson bee balm [and wild globe thistle] had multiplied the garden path and invited teal-bellied hummingbirds while the confused treefrog stayed suctioned to the inner garage wall.

The neighbor’s daughter was stalking blue dragonflies and singing of lily ponds.

Love is a camel ferrying exhausted birds across the desert, hoarding rain, drinking all the stars.

It was difficult to stay in one’s lane with so many distracted drivers and hopeless tailgaters. You missed the turnoff and the appointment at the place that promised to fix you [that wasn’t covered on your insurance plan anyway].

The rope somehow became unknotted from your last anchor.

Everything is philosophy, isn’t it?

No longer oppressive, the sun fell behind the fruitless apple tree [still without a mate] and decorated the horizon screen with cloud paintings.

Beautiful things [dusk-fall, fields of yellow star flowers, elegant blue herons] stopped us in our tracks because we needed them—even bitterroot blooms.

The slanted rain took away perpendicular lines. Waterproof lipstick, a first-world commodity.

The man collecting cans did not know how to count them. The store owner did not cheat him, and the man was able to buy two single servings of wine. When he drank them later in the parking lot, did he forget about home?

Already one thought of winter and missed the sound of rain falling and background bird trills. Missed walking barefoot in wet grass soothing feet tired from standing too many hours with too  many diplomas. Dreams of the ocean would make everything palatable, at least. Until anxiety wound the sleeping subject into a top that couldn’t stop spinning.

The men come and go speaking of golf, a beloved giant poodle on chemo, a mother who doesn’t remember her name. The oblivious children frolic with lollipops. A woman drinks cheap vodka with her cats while knitting socks.

Canvases purchased should be larger than the subject, a colossal door opening. Green for summer grass, blues for the sea or sky, yellow primrose and forsythia stars. Purple for irises already lost, orange for burnishing sunfall.

The cicadas will be earlier tonight and remind that the days relinquish toward autumn. How things will be defined by what they are not. July is not January. Money is not water. Not everything can be counted. Not everything can be lost.